Well, lets presume you're working 10 hrs a day...

24 hours in a day - 10 hours of creativity draining work = 14 hours left - 6 hours for sleep = 8 potential hours for creativity a day. and then there are weekends...

its just a matter of how you use your time.

ehh, I'm not sure your math is really correct their pixelwhore... if we start with the 14 hrs left over (which I think maybe a little generous considering some of our work schedules, maybe not)

Personally I get home around 6:30-7:00 eat dinner until about 8:00 and go to bed around 11:30, 12:00. That's roughly 4 hours. If you have a family or significant other, that's about 2 hours gone, other obligations, cleaning your home/laundry, washing dishes, paying your bills, random crap that you have to do... it can easily eat up that "free time" quickly. That and sometimes you want to just veg-out on the couch.

to answer the original poster's question, yes, I'm worried that if I ever get to do anything creative, my brain will have long since rotted away, and I'll probably contribute the crapitecture that is so prevalent in the world today.

cheers!

edit: ...math is really correct their pixelwhore... should be there

my brain is already going!

edit: ...your brain WILL not function in the same innovative/imaginative ways it used to?

mine is going too!

yeah, its pretty obvious that everyone's schedule is going to be different, but I see it as if you want to do something creative, you just gotta make the time for it. for some people it may not be a priority, while for others it may come before significant others, and for the majority of us its to some degree in between.

the main point I was getting across is that you can still do creative stuff if you're working a 9-5, it just takes a bit more commitment.

so .... if everybody's so bored to tears and worried about brain deterioration, why is it so hard to get younger professionals to take off the headphones, actually listen to what's going on in the studio and even get up out of the chair from time-to-time to participate in a conversation about design or how a building goes together

we try to operate a collaborative studio and it's like pulling teeth to get interns and young architects to engage in the studio process ... all they want to do is sit at their screens (especially those who arrange the booth so the screen can't be seen from the studio), listen to music and play with the mouse and keyboard ... hmmmm ... do you suppose they're not really working ... ?

come on people ... if you want to be an architect instead of a cad monkey, use some initiative

quizzical, I can't imagine that you employ any of my peers from undergrad with that description. That sounds as close minded as someone elses recent comments on another thread about the so called "old-coots" running the show...(I didn't agree with him, by the way.)

as for the original post...I like my job, and am fortunate that it is a creative outlet, to a certain degree.
However, a few of my friends, who certainly do not lack talent and initiative, have typical entry level internships. They feel like you do, rebelguy, so we're doing a competition. I should mention though, they have all asked their superiors for more diverse sets of responsibility, but with little success...

that's a good question/point, quizzical

I don't know anything about your office, and I think if you have that kind of atmosphere interns should be participating. It may be that they don't know that their opinion is wanted/valued, or are worried that senior people will think they are "goofing off" by listening to the conversation, or it may be that they are overloaded with the more menial drafting tasks, and by particpating in discussions, they're just pushing their day back an extra few hours.

I know in some of the places I have worked the offers of "design opportunities" are somewhat disingenuous. For example, a senior designer will say, what do you think about this canopy? or some smaller detail, without explaining what the overall concept behind the design, or the approach to how the rest of the building was made. The senior designer isn't even saying, "could you sketch up a few ideas for this entry canopy..." they are just doing "ambush design" (that's what I call it) and I hate that. If that happens, it's more than likely the intern will just shrug or walk away. I know when it happened to me, it wasn't because I didn't want to participate, it's just that the opportunity presented to me, wasn't really a useful way to do it. I don't know if that makes sense. I guess I'm trying to stress, if you want an intern to participate, fill them in on what's going on, (if they haven't been already) and let them have some meaningful participation, and give them feedback afterwards. That kind of think is lacking in a lot of places...

ap ... there are days when i do feel like an "old coot" ... today's not one of those days, however.

look ... there are some really meaningful attitudinal differences between "boomers" and "Gen-X" and "Gen-Y" (not that i'm trying to label anybody) ... we all just see the world differently and it's really hard getting everybody on the same page for more than a nanosecond ... pencrush makes some very valid observations above and i appreciate his perspective

there's a really interesting psychological phenemonon called "learned helplessness" ... we see a lot of it in design firms ... a) a senior person will ask a junior person to originate a few idea ... b) the junior person will do as asked, with enthusiasm ... c) the senior person dismisses the junior person's idea (often without grace) and tells him/her "here, just do it this way" ... d) after this happens 6-7 times, the junior person stops trying to offer ideas because there's no chance the ideas will be treated with respect

the corollary is this ... a) a senior person asks a junior person to originate a few ideas ... b) the junior person is terrified or has 'designer block' or doesn't want to risk looking the fool, so he/she really never offers any ideas (or, doesn't have any) ... c) the senior person is disappointed and, after this happens 6-7 times, doesn't return to that well again

collaboration is the proverbial two-way street .. the senior people have to be genuinely receptive to what junior people have to offer and take a little risk while the junior person learns how to develop some raw ideas .... and, the junior people have to be willing to participate and engage and be willing to risk something of themselves and not be permanently offended when every idea they offer isn't adopted

the main difference between school and practice is that in practice, architecture is a team sport ... it works best when it's a contact sport ... but to be truly workable, the engagement has to work BOTH ways.

of course, sometimes design means fitting 2 loos into the space of 1, 50 times. substitute loo for...anything, for 6 months. i get a lot of that. i feel like i'm breaking space.

admitting my worst fear for a moment, that doing uninspiring work reduces your moments of inspiration (maybe we all have a finite number of mouse clicks / heart beats in us before creativity gives up the ghost), must you have design responsibility to keep the fire burning? or is it enough to CAD monkey for rem?

on one level i'd like to believe with pixelwhore that you make time for what needs to be done, on the other hand there is no time. you're too tired after commuting, working 9-8, doing everything else to even think about what needs to be done.

but denying this thread's premise in conclusion, because, just no, please not in front of the architects

quizzical,
it sounds like you need to look at who you're hiring. it's very seldom that i've found the situation that you're just describing.
of course i've always worked in design-focused offices...but it's amazing to me that someone coming out of 5 years of design training would not participate in the way you're discussing. one thing, though, is that most of the offices i have worked at have a "no headphones" policy...not that it is always followed when working late or on a serious crunch...but during the day you just aren't allowed to plug yourself in. try forcing the kids to scrap the headphones and get a nice sound system for the office so there's some background ambience...
then see what happens.

First your creativity, then your taste.

very true

prefer coltrane/brubeck/davis over kenny g


the kid looks thrilled, i hope thats not you diabase

Ok, ok, I get the picture. You're right, I did make some extremely close minded generalizations about the 'old coots'. Today's a new day & my head is in a better mental state.

quizzical said:

"there's a really interesting psychological phenemonon called "learned helplessness" ... we see a lot of it in design firms ... a) a senior person will ask a junior person to originate a few idea ... b) the junior person will do as asked, with enthusiasm ... c) the senior person dismisses the junior person's idea (often without grace) and tells him/her "here, just do it this way" ... d) after this happens 6-7 times, the junior person stops trying to offer ideas because there's no chance the ideas will be treated with respect"

and some other things.

I've experienced this more times than I can count. It's very difficult to spend time on something that gets dismissed or trashed.

Perhaps this is why some employees retreat to headphones, etc? When you can't see a way ahead, and your input is not valued, you prefer retreat. It's an excellent set of observations. Any solutions? I'd love solutions for myself (as an underling) and for the boss (when I become one)

Job security is also an issue. When the boss asks "what do you think of this design?" it's difficult to tell him that it truely sucks.

I *do* get frusterated with the principals - they aren't willing to sell better design to the clients (or get better clients) which means that we end up spending much of our time designing split face monstrosities. They aren't doing the job THEY need to do, in order to make us give a damn. (am I being close minded?)

ok, back to CAD

hmmmm ... i'm seeing a strong correlation between some of the discussion here and the discussion of IDP under the "Liensure ... the case for / the case against" thread ... maybe it time to start a new thread ...

diabase -- that was a gift, I didn't buy it, I swear. (but I do kind of like track 4...)

I don't think I was ever creative. Actually, all I can do is make diagrams and render. I blow at design. Who the hell accepted me?

in another thread (Licensure ... the case for / the case against) jump wrote the following: "the waste of so many bright minds in the bureacratic mentality that suffuses firms is really sad"

okay ... i accept that bureaucracy can be a bad thing ... and, i have to assume that jump is addressing firms of some significant size ... say, 30+ people ...

however, since projects are getting incrementally larger and more complex with each passing year, i suspect that bureaucracy and the division of work into smaller (albeit more boring) bundles is a natural human reaction to those trends ... i don't defend it -- i only observe it

how can a firm that is working under huge time pressures and highly competitive fee structures avoid the bureaucratic haze about which jump speaks and still meet its obligations to its clients ?

i can testify as to "learned helplessness" as i have seemed to battle it quite a bit...but then again, that process starts in boot camp...i mean, in architecture school...with the relentless emphasis on critique and criticism via juries, crits, reviews, and the "informal" chats with one's professors.

i practically had to invent (for myself) the assertion that if a project fulfills the NEEDS of the program/budget/client wishes/etc then everything else is subjective.

what has saved me is that i am stubborn, i know what i like, i know what i think is good, and i can at least go back to my desk and say, "well at least i like it, i still think it's good." i'm not very interested in debating it -- they have their opinion, i have mine, and at the end of the day who cares unless it gets built.

this however is not an attitude that's easily acquired in our academic system.

I did a quick presentation handout friday afternoon where I pushed the text and graphics to the edge of the sheet. For the 30 minutes I put into it, it looked nice enough. My boss/owner said he liked it but to push the text in a bit so it sits a little more 'comfortably'.

I liked the tension.

But that was my opinion and he had his. And his is worth more since he writes the paychecks.


Probably not the most interesting story on the subject, but while he was giving his opinion i was thinking of this thread.